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Mrs. Blueberry, Kansas City Age and Occupation in 06: 21, Full-time Student Fiance's Age and Occupation: 23, Full-time Student Engagement Date: September 10, 2005 Wedding Date: May 25, 2007 Venue: Wynbrick Center - a historic mansion in my hometown. About Me: We're having an intimate, 125-ish person wedding with a full-blown dessert reception. When I'm not obsessing over wedding stuff or studying for my BA in English, I'm usually playing with our two kitty cats, blogging, doing crafty things, or hanging out with Mr. Blueberry!
About Mrs. Blueberry

Invitations

March 11th, 2007 @ 3:22 pm by Mrs. Blueberry

Oh my, where to begin? Well, most of you know that my whole spring break here in Kansas City has been devoted to working on the various pieces of wedding stationery–invitations, rehearsal invites, map cards, thank you notes. Consequently, I’m now at a point where I don’t care if I never see a pad of silver ink, or a rubber star stamp, or blue Paper Source cardstock ever again!

I designed my stationery last fall, and placed the Paper Source order in time to use them for my STD’s too. I was inspired by two designs:
Invitations :  wedding diy invitations kansas city Z792437 z792437
(via kenziekate)

and

Invitations :  wedding diy invitations kansas city Z792438 z792438
(via Alia Designs)

I then used these to design the text and layout of my invites, using two fonts: Copperplate Gothic Light, and Celeste:

proof.jpg

I used MS Word to create a text box with the dimensions of my A6 special cut cardstock, and then when I started printing them I tweaked the margins a bit so it fit squarely on the paper (which is why you should buy extras, btw!).

It takes inkjet ink a while to dry on this paper, so the process was rather slow and gradual. But luckily we have a massive antique dining table in our second kitchen that I could dry them on. After they dried, I took them back to my work table and stamped each one with silver ink and my rubber star stamps:

Invitations :  wedding diy invitations kansas city Z792458 z792458

Here are some close-ups of the stamped pattern (sorry it’s still not that clear):
Invitations :  wedding diy invitations kansas city Z792473 z792473

Invitations :  wedding diy invitations kansas city Z792475 z792475

Then, after the silver ink dried too, I attached the second layer to the back of the invites. For this I used A7-sized black cardstock, also from Paper Source. I felt that this gave them more dimension:

Invitations :  wedding diy invitations kansas city Z792481 z792481

To attach the two layers, I used spray glue:
Invitations :  wedding diy invitations kansas city Z792504 z792504

and many, many layers of newspaper to protect my work surface. Here are the two separate elements:
Invitations :  wedding diy invitations kansas city Z792541 z792541

After gluing the layers together, I had to let it dry for a few more hours:
Invitations :  wedding diy invitations kansas city Z789574 z789574

~~~
Mr, Blueberry designed the map cards himself, using Paint Shop Pro and Google Maps. I honestly don’t know how he did it, so I’ll be letting him make a tutorial to post here in a few days.
Invitations :  wedding diy invitations kansas city Z792558 z792558
~~~
I had designed the brunch enclosure and response cards in much the same way as I did the invites.

The brunch will be a fairly intimate affair; we only invited approx. 25% of our guests to it. Guests who are invited will receive the brunch enclosure and this response card:

Invitations :  wedding diy invitations kansas city Z792495 z792495

Invitations :  wedding diy invitations kansas city Z792489 z792489
(I filled in the second ___ with the number of guests invited!)

Guests who aren’t invited to the brunch won’t receive the brunch enclosure, and will get a response card with no brunch reply space.

Here’s my hand-addressed reply envelopes:
Invitations :  wedding diy invitations kansas city Z792516 z792516

Anticipating the postage increase and being of a “better safe than sorry” mindset, I added 4c stamps to the 39c wedding stamps I bought. I know the increase will be no more than 3c, but those stamps are pretty ugly so I figured a penny extra per envelope wouldn’t hurt anything smiley101

~~~
I left the outer envelopes and response envelopes plain, but put a bit of detail onto the inner envelopes:
Invitations :  wedding diy invitations kansas city Z792522 z792522

The invitation and inner envelope together:
Invitations :  wedding diy invitations kansas city Z792575 z792575

An example of my writing on the outer envelope:
Invitations :  wedding diy invitations kansas city Z792582 z792582

Before I began assembly, I took care of the personalized elements of each invitation: the name and address on the outer envelope, the name on the inner envelope, the number of guests on the response card, and the pencilled-in number I discreetly wrote on the back of each response card.

This last idea was something I picked up from one of my fellow ‘Bees (I’m sorry I can’t remember who!). The idea being, that some guests won’t write in their names on the response card, so instead of receiving anonymous responses you can write in a number which corresponds to the number on the guest list–if Grandma is #23 on your guest list and you receive a blank response card with the #23 that you wrote on the back, you’ll still know it was her!

So by the time I began assembling, I’d already grouped together and double-checked each person’s inner and outer envelope, and response card:
Invitations :  wedding diy invitations kansas city Z792572 z792572

Once everything was printed and dried, stamped and addressed, I began the assembly process. This required a lot of concentration–I couldn’t carry on a conversation as I worked on this step. I wanted to make sure I didn’t forget to give someone a map, or send someone else a brunch enclosure but no brunch response card, etc!

All the different elements together:
Invitations :  wedding diy invitations kansas city Z792549 z792549

~~~
Finally, here are the thank you notes:

Invitations :  wedding diy invitations kansas city Z792566 z792566

Invitations :  wedding diy invitations kansas city Z792568 z792568

Well, I hope that was enough of a picture-heavy post for you all! Let me know if you have any unanswered questions!

Tags: diy, invitations, kansas-city |
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25 Responses to “Invitations”

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1.
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wsukarebear

Those look great! Thanks for including your RSVP, as I am working on that right now and I like your wording. :-)

Great job!

 
2.
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jaycee

Miss Blueberry you have such lovely penmanship! And your invites are beautiful! I just helped my friend assemble her invites, it took so long even with 4 sets of busy hands and they weren’t even DIY. Whew, you are a patient patient lady! =)

 
3.
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kattail

What a great job you did. I love to get a DIY invite because it shows part of yourself. I am planning on making my own invitations too, hope I do as good a job as you!!

 
4.
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Miss Tulip

Your invitations are absolutely beautiful!

 
5.
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Colleen

Looks great! Where did you get all of your stamps?

 
6.
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Colleen

I mean your RUBBER stamps.

 
7.
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Rhonda

Miss Blueberry, you definitely are talented! The upcoming change in postage is really causing alot of discussion.

Has anyone seen the Photostamps at http://www.photostamps.com? You can have any photo put on the stamp and they come in various denominations. They are fairly expensive (around twice the normal price), but how often do you get married?!?

 
8.
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Miss Lemon

Great job & congrats on being done!!!! Thanks for all of the assembly tips as well… I can’t believe I’m getting close to that stage!

 
9.
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Miss Snow Pea

Wow Miss Blueberry,
You’re invitations are beautiful. I can totally appreciate the time and care you put into them. Stamping and gluing. whew!

 
10.
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jlz

Beautiful invitations! You did a great job. I am thinking about doing my own invitations, but am a little scared about it. We’ll see if I can do it!
PS: Can you give us an idea of how much your invitations cost?

 
11.
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vy

wow, that’s alot of hard work. I love it. Can you tell me what you did to the flap of the inner envelope?

 
12.
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Teresa

They look wonderful!! Can anyone tell me about this extra postage stuff? I haven’t heard of anything and I am about to send out my invites! Do I need to add an extra stamp to my response envelopes and my invitations?

 
13.
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Lixue

wow what a great job!

 
14.
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Miss Blueberry

Glad you like them, everyone!

jlz–sure! Thanks for the great idea–I’ll put up a post tomorrow :-) Luckily, I saved all my information on an Excel spreadsheet :-)

vy–I used the same stamp that you’ll notice is stamped in long silver business near the bottom of the invitation. I just stamped it along one side of the flap, then rotated it and stamped it along the other side!

Colleen–I got my stamps from either Michaels (my favorite store ever!) or http://www.addictedtorubberstamps.com. The latter was very nice to deal with, even if their shopping cart system is a bit odd.

Teresa–there was a great post yesterday about that! Rates will be going up at least 2c, probably on May 1. Since that was our “respond by” date, I went ahead and included the extra postage. And since I don’t like the 2c or 3c stamps, I put on 4c ones.

 
15.
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Abbie from class

I love your invitations: they turned out beautifully. I think you should become a professional invitation-maker!

 
16.
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Miss Plumeria

Whoa, I’m in awe of your patience! Looks like it took a lot of time (along with the blood, sweat and tears) but isn’t it all worth it?? :) Great work!!!

 
17.
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Annie

looks very classy and you did a wonderful job.

 
18.
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Miss Peach

i love the colors! and the simple yet elegant look of these invites. good job miss blueberry!!

 
19.
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bethgraced

lovely! they initially caught my eye because of the beautiful blue you used! FI and I will be using a blue/brown color scheme, but couldn’t decide on a blue. I think the one you used is my favorite that I’ve seen. I want to DIY my invitations, too, so thanks for posting in such detail!

 
20.
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kp

great work!! i should get my butt to start working on my invites~ both you and miss plumeria have great DIY skills!!

 
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Mrs. Blueberry
Mrs. Blueberry

Mrs. Blueberry, Kansas City Age and Occupation in 06: 21, Full-time Student Fiance's Age and Occupation: 23, Full-time Student Engagement Date: September 10, 2005 Wedding Date: May 25, 2007 Venue: Wynbrick Center - a historic mansion in my hometown. About Me: We're having an intimate, 125-ish person wedding with a full-blown dessert reception. When I'm not obsessing over wedding stuff or studying for my BA in English, I'm usually playing with our two kitty cats, blogging, doing crafty things, or hanging out with Mr. Blueberry!

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